The creation and editing of electronic documents on digital processing systems, such as computer systems, has allowed users of such systems to create elaborate and creative documents. One obstacle to the use of such systems is the interface between the user and the computer system. This interface, often referred to as a user interface, is sometimes so difficult to understand and/or to use that only relatively trivial electronic documents can be created and edited by a typical user.
Graphical user interfaces are typically easier to use than command line user interfaces. As a result, graphical user interfaces have proliferated on computer systems. Such interfaces provide different types of views to the user. For example, one view which is commonly available from document processing software is a "page view" which typically shows a full view of a complete page of a document. This view is different from what may be considered to be a magnified view showing only a portion of a page. Thus, if a page contains several objects, such as several different digital images on one page, the magnified view may only show one or two such images, whereas the page view would show all the images on the page.
Another conventional method used in graphical user interfaces involves miniaturized images which represent a page. These miniaturized images are often referred to as "thumbnails." An example of these thumbnails may be found in certain computer programs, such as Claris Works from Apple Computer, Inc. These thumbnail views of a page are presented to a user when the user desires to open an existing document to either view the document or edit the document. Typically, a dialog box is displayed to the user, and this dialog box includes a listing of available, existing documents which may be viewed using the program. By selecting one of the documents, a thumbnail image of the document may be made to appear in the dialog box. This allows the user to verify that the document is the document which the user desired to view. This is often useful in cases where the file name for the document does not tell the user the content of the file (e.g. because the user forgot the file name which was used to store the document). This thumbnail image is also often referred to as a preview image. That is, it allows the user to preview the image before actually opening the full page of the document.
Often, a page of a document will have multiple objects, such as digital images, on the page. Typically, these multiple objects are placed on the page through manual interaction between the user and the computer system. For example, the user may select several different objects and cause them to be placed on the page. While this is often desirable in many cases, it does not allow the user to automatically create a collection of documents which may be desirable in certain cases.